


Haunted by Humans

by TheGameIsOn_Geronimo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Death, Gen, Horcruxes, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Master of Death Harry Potter, POV Alternating, Probably more hurt though, like lots of them - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 20:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14316291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGameIsOn_Geronimo/pseuds/TheGameIsOn_Geronimo
Summary: Death follows the footsteps of Tom Riddle as he becomes Voldemort.Harry Potter meets Death when he sees the people he loves die.They keep meeting.This is their story.





	Haunted by Humans

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is the longest thing I have ever written, and the first time I've written for Harry Potter, so I really hope it's okay and you enjoy it!  
> I think this came about because I was reading/watching far too many things that personified Death - The Book Thief (a great book - go and read it!), Critical Role (a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons), and the Sandman Comics by Neil Gaiman (so good!). Basically I just thought about how Harry experiences Death A LOT and then becomes Master of Death, so I thought the relationship between Death and Harry if 'Death' was real would be quite interesting.  
> Any dialogue or descriptions that seem familiar are from the Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling. I do not own these characters. The title also comes from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak  
> Any mistakes are my own, and I hope the formatting is understandable.  
> Thank you for reading!

_She watches them come along the river bank, laughing, joking. They halt at the edge of the water, the rapids swirling below them, and draw thin pieces of wood from their robes. A bridge crafted of vines spreads across the river. She steps onto it, annoyance bubbling inside her, her cloak pulled up to shield her face._

_“Congratulations!” she whispers but the sound carries like wind through branches, “You show fine skills in evading this river – many before you have died here. Tell me, what can I give you to reward you for evading my grasp?”_

_The brothers, who had hesitated at her appearance, move forwards. The eldest one strides towards her, ‘I’d like the most powerful wand in the world that must always win duels, and is worthy of one who has conquered death.” And he spits at her feet._

_She turns, pulls up her hands and crafts a wand from the elder tree on the river bank, and hands it over with a bow._

_The second brother moves forwards, and gives a sly smile. “I want the power to recall others from death”._

_She grits her teeth, bends down and scoops a stone from the riverbank. “This will have the power to bring back the dead” she tells him, and drops it into his outstretched palm._

_The third brother moves forwards, but he is cautious and shy._

_“And what would you like?” Death asks._

_“I’d like something that may mean I can leave this place and not be followed by you.”_

_She reaches up to her throat, and reluctantly unties her invisibility cloak, passing it over to him._

_“Thank you,” the third brother says._

_And she lets them walk on._

_***_

 

Harry dreams of green light flashing in front of his eyes, and screaming. He wakes with a jolt, looking up at the dusty ceiling of the cupboard under the stairs. He sighs, and rubs his forehead.

‘That must be the crash’, he rationalises, ‘The crash that killed my mum and dad’.

But something doesn’t seem to fit, and he tries to recall the dream. In his mind’s eye he sees a face close to his, pale white in the darkness, with black hair writhing around her and eyes of starlight staring into his.

 

***

 

_Death enters the inn as a breath of wind and ascends the stairs. She opens a door without a sound and spies the first brother sprawled out on the bed, a wand of elder lying innocently on the bedside table._

_Behind her, a man pushes open the door and it creaks. However, the brother, drunk into slumber, barely stirs. The man takes hold of the wand and slips it inside his robes, then pulls out a knife that glints in the moonlight and slits the brother’s throat._

_Blood pours out onto the mattress as the man hurries away. The brother’s eyes meet hers with startled fear, and she touches his heart, pulling him to her domain._

 

_***_

 

Harry’s legs are trembling ever so slightly, but the weight in his pocket seems to force strength into his veins. He stares at his reflection, and knows that he must lie.

‘I see myself shaking hands with Dumbledore… I – I’ve won the House Cup for Gryffindor’, fabricated truths fall from his lips with barely a hesitation. And then there, in the reflection’s background, a shadowy face? He tries to turn as Quirrell pushes him out of the way, but there is nothing, just stone wall and flickering torchlight.

Quirrell unwraps his turban slowly, and turns. Harry tries not to scream as Voldemort himself faces him and speaks. He speaks of what he has become, and taunts him about his parents, and Harry feels anger rise up inside him.

He sees the woman just over Quirrell’s shoulder as the man lunges for him and grabs his wrist. She’s ethereal against the plain stone walls, and looks barely corporeal – like fog that someone could simply wave away. Her eyes are shrouded in shadow, but her hair lashes out like shadowy tendrils, framing her face in angry curls.

Then there is pain as Quirrell touches him, and he screws up his eyes in agony just as Quirrell releases him with a grunt and a yell of pain of his own. He opens his eyes and watches Quirrell’s skin blistering, and falls back as Quirrell goes for his throat again only to pull away, burning.

Suddenly the strange woman is closer, so close she practically hovers above them on the ground, and Harry fleetingly wonders how Voldemort can’t see her, before he slams his palms into Quirrell’s face.

As blackness consumes him from the blinding pain, he thinks he sees the woman smile, and plant her hand on Quirrell’s back.

 

***

 

_Even as she enters the house she can feel the despair leaching from it. The woman she finds in the front room droops like a puppet with broken strings, her face pale and emotionless. Death wraps a cloak around her shoulders, and lets her back into her domain from where she had been summoned._

_The brother sits in his study, his clothes dirty, his skin filthy, and shining tear tracks glistening down his face. He doesn’t make a sound as she moves to stand in front of him, silent in his longing and his grief, and his hopelessness. The empty poison bottle slips from his lap as he gags and splutters, hunching forward in this chair. She steps forward, forces his head up by the throat, and pulls away his soul as a black pebble falls from his slack grip. She takes him to his lover, and decides that she is merciful._

 

_***_

 

The blood soaks his robes as fire burns through his veins. He tries to push himself up to face Riddle as the memory advances on him, but his arms are too weak, and he flounders on the cold floor.

Riddle is speaking, but the words are hazy and seem to drift lazily around him. Out of the shadows, he watches a silent figure approach.

It’s the woman he saw once before, back in the room with the man with two faces and the Mirror of Erised. She looks the same, swathed in black robes that seem to melt into the surroundings, but her eyes are clearer this time as she approaches him. They glitter with specks of silver on black, looking like a starry sky, and Harry feels like he could fall into them.

She crouches next to him, and Harry shivers at the sudden cold. His skin prickles as she moves a hand over the wound on his arm, and then her eyes focus on his face.

‘Who – who are you?’ he chokes out, trembling badly as the floor seems to suck the warmth from his bones.

 _‘Oh, Harry Potter_ ,’ says a voice inside his head, ‘ _I am Death.’_

He shudders, but speaks without fear. He’s not scared of death. ‘Are you here to take me?’

She tilts her head, considering him like a particularly difficult puzzle, but then she smiles. ‘ _Not today, young one… Another time perhaps?’_

Harry almost chokes on a laugh, and then follows her gaze as it shifts to focus on the red bird sitting next to him and crying onto the wound. The burning fades, warmth rushes in to fill the gaps it left behind, and as Harry grabs the diary that has been brought next to him, he realises Death has gone.

 

***

 

_She loses sight of the third brother. No matter where she searches she can’t see him. She lets him go after a while, knowing that one day they’ll have to meet – that’s the truth of the mortals._

_She lets him live. It’s something she’ll never experience, but she sees it in the souls she touches. The joy, the pain, the fear, the hope, she can sense it all when they see her for the first and last time, as she takes them away._

_After many years, she stands away from the bed, in a shadowy corner, and watches the group say their goodbyes. Some of them are crying, some are trying to say goodbye with a smile. She watches the frail old man hand a cloak to his eldest son. It shimmers in the candlelight, and she recognises it as her own – a gift to the cleverest brother._

_She steps forwards slowly, and his eyes shift from his son’s face to hers over his shoulder. He gives her a shy smile, one she remembers from a much younger face, and lifts his hand to her. She moves through the crowd, feeling them instinctively part from her chilling presence and takes his hand._

_‘Come then, old friend. Let us depart.’ And she tugs on his hand, and they leave as equals._

 

_***_

 

Harry looks aghast at Professor Trelawney as the whole class stares at him. The Grim - an omen of death? Was that true?

He hurriedly puts away his things when the class is dismissed, and he descends the ladder. His thoughts drift to the woman he had seen in the Chamber of Secrets, with her porcelain face and deep eyes. He wasn’t even sure whether she had merely been a hallucination caused by the basilisk venom, or whether she had really been there. She had said she was Death. And she didn’t have a great big black dog with her, but then again maybe it had been prowling in the shadows.

‘I’d ignore her, Harry,’ Hermione jerks him out of his thoughts, ‘You can’t forsee when people will die.’

‘Uh huh,’ Harry mutters, ‘She seemed quite sure of it though’.

‘Yes well, she was probably just being dramatic to make an impression,’ Hermione says disparagingly, ‘Divination isn’t a real skill anyway.’

‘Maybe just keep a look out over your shoulder though, Harry,’ Ron adds jokingly, ‘We don’t want Death himself to swoop in and carry you off.’ He’s smiling, but something nags at Harry.

‘Or herself,’ he says, absently.

‘What?’

Harry blinks, ‘Death could be female? I don’t know why everyone assumes Death is a he and carries a scythe and everything’. The woman in the chamber hadn’t been carrying anything.

‘Oh, what rubbish both of you,’ Hermione snaps, ‘Death isn’t a person who goes around collecting everyone as they die, you just die and that’s it.’

‘Hmm maybe,’ Harry contemplates, but as they make their way down the corridor all he can think of is a half-smile, a cold presence, and the clear voice: _Another time, perhaps._

 

_***_

 

_She stalks the woman who staggers through the soot-stained streets, her feet barely supporting her weight. The woman is hunched, curled against the freezing snow that speckles her ragged clothes and lank hair._

_Merope Gaunt forces herself up a set of stairs, and raps loudly on the wooden door. Even from this distance, Death can see that she is shivering._

_The door opens, and the orphanage matron pulls her inside, and Death steps in smoothly behind her just before the door is pushed closed._

_She follows Merope to a room with a bed, and watches, with a kind of fascination as a life is started right there in front of her. She’s always been the one to snatch life away, not to watch it being created. The baby screams and cries as it takes it first breath, and Death thinks “Odd. I can’t see when you are meant to die”._

_Merope lays on the bed, her dirty figure a stark contrast to the crisp white sheets. She pants out a name, and a wish for the child to look like his father, and then drifts._

_Death approaches and looks down at her. She is exhausted, defeated. The power that should boil within her lies sluggish and forgotten, and Merope sees her and looks at her with pleading eyes._

_‘Please,’ is all she says, and Death brushes her cheek with her hand, and pulls her from her suffering._

 

_***_

 

His stomach jolts as he falls onto grass, and the cup rolls away from their hands. He lets Cedric pull him to his feet, and looks around, noting the graves and the silence and the darkness.

They draw their wands together, and Harry feels fear start to bubble in his stomach, not understanding why the cup was a Portkey, where they were, and who was coming.

A figure approaches them, clutching a bundle in their arms, and Harry feels his scar explode in pain. He grabs his head, and falls, pain crippling him, as he hears the words spoken cold and clear:

‘Kill the spare.’

The flash of green light shines through his eyelids, and he retches onto the grass, turning his head and squinting his eyes open.

There on the ground lies Cedric. He’s unmoving, and his eyes stare upwards, unseeing. Crouched over him is the woman from the Chamber. Her long hair hangs around her face, obscuring her expression, but she is touching Cedric’s chest with a pale, long fingered hand. As he watches, breaths gasping through his teeth, she lifts her head and looks at him. She has the same skeletal face, and porcelain skin, but her eyes are lost in black shadows. Harry chokes slightly as a chill spreads through him. He knows she’s Death, and she’s taken Cedric, but if she’s still here, does that mean she has to collect someone else?

Their stare is broken as Harry’s dragged towards a marble headstone and is tied tightly to it. When he looks back towards Cedric’s body, the figure is still there, standing up now, tall and thin. He turns back to Wormtail, and watches a scene from his worst nightmares. The cauldron is prepared, and Wormtail drops the bundle into it - a scaly, blackish red, snakelike baby splashing into the boiling liquid. He pulls a bone from the ground below the grave, cuts off his arm into the cauldron, and slices blood from Harry’s own arm.

The mist that emerges from the cauldron coalesces into a figure, and Harry can’t breathe. The man is thin, and pale, and he rises slowly from the cauldron, and is given robes. Harry glances quickly back to where Cedric lays, panic gripping him, and can just see that the figure is still there, her black robes blending with the shadows. She’s completely still, and Harry can’t see her face from the billowing mass of hair writhing around her face, but he wishes she could just take him now.

When he looks back around, Lord Voldemort is staring straight at him.

Voldemort examines his body, then calls his servants, and all the while Harry is frozen in fear, breaths heaving out of him. His brain is running so quickly, adrenaline coursing through him, but only one thought keeps pushing through: ‘I am going to die. I don’t want to die.’

When Voldemort touches his skin, there is only all-consuming pain, and he can barely concentrate on Voldemort’s words as he explains what happened when he was just a baby and everything since then, culminating in this moment.

Harry remains standing as the ropes are cut from around him, and his wand is thrust into his hand. He trembles and shakes as he grips it tight.

‘Bow to death, Harry’ The words stir something inside him, and as he’s forced to bend over, he looks behind Voldemort and sees her, Death herself. It almost looks like she’s raising her eyebrows at the irony of that statement, and Harry just hopes that when the inevitable happens she can get to him quickly.

He’s tortured and so scared, but he won’t give in to Voldemort. He lifts his chin up behind the shelter of the gravestone, while hopelessness pools in his heart, and steps out, raising his wand.

‘Expelliarmus!’ ‘Avada Kedavra!’

The spells collide in mid-air, and Harry grabs his wand tightly. The connection builds a golden cage around them, enclosing them in a shell of light. From the strands, phoenix song emanates, a sound of hope and light and life, and Harry uses it to force the beads of light in the connection towards Voldemort.

As he puts everything into forcing the connection to hold, he sees the figure step through the barrier, wrapped in black shadows. Her face is hard and cold, and with a quick glance at Harry, Death turns towards Voldemort. Harry feels hope fill his heart, and uses it to push the golden beads straight into Voldemort’s wand, just as Death places her hand on the wood.

Smoke emerges from the wand-tip, and they condense into images. A hand floats in front of Voldemort, then dissipates, but then that is followed by the body of Cedric Diggory who tells Harry to ‘Hold on.’ An old man emerges next, and then Bertha Jorkins, and they pace around the edge of the cage, watching closely. Then finally, two figures emerge from the wand, and Harry stares at his mother and father as they approach him. They tell him what to do, how to get back, and Cedric asks for his body to be taken back. Harry can only watch, and then he sees Death approaching him and he thinks in panic, ‘Not now.’

But she’s smiling, and the golden light emanating from the connection makes her skin glow and her hair shimmers. She looks at him, and Harry suddenly thinks of the phrase Angel of Death, as she seems close to that image right at this moment. His heart pounding, he stares at her, and then says in desperation, ‘Look after him.’

Her eyes flick to the shadowy figure of Cedric, then she turns back to him and dips her head in acknowledgement, ‘ _I will’_ she replies in his mind, ‘ _And I will help you escape._ ’

They tell him to break the connection, and he forces the wand upwards so the golden thread snaps. The ghosts converge on Voldemort, and Death steps in front of him, feathery wings protruding from her shoulder blades, shielding him from the spells thrown by Death Eaters as he spins around and sprints for the cup. He grabs Cedric’s arm, and looking back he meets Voldemort’s red eyes as he raises his wand, and in a split second the cup is forced into his grasp by a skeletal hand, and they’re gone. 

 

***

 

_Death stands in the bathroom, and her shoes are getting wet from the water pooling on the floor. From the cubicles she can hear crying, but she doesn’t move closer. Her eyes are focussed on the figure in the doorway._

_The boy steps into the room with grace. He’s young and handsome, with prominent cheekbones, pale skin, and black hair. As he approaches, she feels her skin start to prickle, but she holds her ground, curious as to how this will proceed._

_He whispers words in Parseltongue and the sinks separate and reveal an open pipe, and there sliding out into the room is a gigantic serpent. As it rises up, Death hears the cubicle door open, and a high, childish voices exclaims, ‘Go away! This is a girls –‘ but Myrtle never gets the words out. Death moves to where she falls, not making a splash in the still water, and touches her soul. She feels it demand to stay where it is, and she lets it go into the air, knowing a ghost will form from it soon enough._

_The clunk of the sink causes her to turn back around. The basilisk has gone, and the boy is moving towards Myrtle. He drags her to the centre of the room, and places a black book on her chest. Death moves forward, stands over the body, and looks at the boy with both curiosity and the first stirrings of fear. He had ordered the snake to kill the girl, killed her in cold blood. Death was no stranger to the cruelty of humans, but as he pulls out his wand and starts to chant an incantation she knows this is something new._

_It seems to hurt what he does, he gasps and falls to his knees, but keeps chanting. Power swirls through the room, mirroring the blood mixing with the water on the floor, flowing from newly made wounds on the girl’s body._

_Death moves towards the boy, and stands over him. The spell compels her to grab his chest. He opens his mouth in shock at her icy touch, as she twists and pulls and holds his soul in front of him. He stares at it, panting, and as they watch, a crack runs down the middle and the glowing orb splits in two, contorting as though in agony. Death forces one half back into the student, and he falls backwards, splashing onto the floor. She spins on the spot and walks to the book left on the body, scoops it up, and shoves the other half into it. The pages flutter, and Death feels the boy’s eyes on her. She flips the diary over and reads the name at the bottom, then tosses the book to him. He scrambles for it, cradles it against his chest, and she marches out of that place without looking back at Tom Marvolo Riddle._

 

_***_

 

Harry knows he is dreaming. It had started normal – or as normal as dreams can be – visions of Cho, and Hermione, and baubles with Dobby’s face on them, but now the dream has changed. His body feels long, smooth and scaled, and he slides along the black floor. He looks around, and there to the side he sees a man with flaming red hair. The man is falling asleep, Harry can smell his drowsiness, but as he slithers forwards the man stirs and stands upright, drawing his wand. ‘Well now’, Harry thinks, ‘that won’t do.’

He rears back, contorting himself so he is high above the floor, and lunges, plunging his teeth into the warm flesh once, twice, and a final third time. As he draws back he sees a figure in the shadows beside him, blending with the darkness but with a face like a skull. The man has fallen forwards and there is blood splattering onto the floor, and his head is on fire, and…

‘Harry!’

Harry jerks upwards in bed, sweat covering his body and his scar burning in agony. He sees Ron standing in front of him, just before he rolls over and throws up on the floor. Voices move around him, but he reaches for Ron’s arm, grabs it in a tight grip and forces out, ‘Your dad… your dad’s been attacked…’. He tries to explain, tries to tell him how bad it was, that there was blood going everywhere, that Death herself was there, watching from the wings, but Ron doesn’t seem to understand, just thinking it was a dream. Professor McGonagall arrives, and he tries to tell her too, and something in his pure panic must reach her, as she brings him to see Dumbledore.

Panic causes his heart to pound in his chest as they hurry through the castle, and as he sees Dumbledore and tries to explain himself, it almost overflows out of him. And still the headmaster doesn’t look at him. He tells him that he was the snake, that it was him that did the damage, that the damage is serious. What he doesn’t tell him is that they may already be too late. Death had been there, and if she had swooped in and taken Mr Weasley already, there was nothing they could do. He didn’t feel like he could tell Dumbledore that he was accustomed to seeing Death though, that may just make everyone think he was completely mad.

Dumbledore sends portraits to assess the situation, and after the longest few minutes they return saying Mr Weasley’s been taken to St Mungo’s. In Harry’s mind he imagines a stretcher carrying Mr Weasley with his cloaks drenched in blood, and a skeletal figure walking along next to it, a pale hand poised over his heart.

Dumbledore sends him and the Weasley children to Grimmauld Place, and after explaining what he had seen, they settle in to wait for a seemingly never-ending night. Finally, finally, Mrs Weasley arrives, and says weakly ‘he’s going to be alright’. The relief in the room is palpable, and as the Weasleys go and hug their mother, Harry imagines the skeletal figure dissipating into shadow next to Arthur’s bed, and he silently thinks, ‘Thank you.’

 

***

 

_She wanders through the old mansion, across lush carpet and glazed floorboards, but never causing a creak. The door to the drawing room is ajar, and as she approaches it, green light flashes through it – once… twice… a third time._

_The door blows open ahead of her, and she steps inside. She knows deep in her gut who she will see, but in some ways, she doesn’t_ want _to see him. Death is something that comes for everyone, and as she can’t control it, why should he? Why should he be able to choose who dies in order for him to rip his lifeforce apart._

_He’s standing in the centre of the room, with three bodies littered at his feet. Death approaches the two closest to the door, touches them, and sends them on their way. Then she does the same for the last man, his face frozen in shock and anger._

_She lifts her gaze and sees the same face, but younger, staring back at her. He’s chanting again, but with a surer and clearer voice than he had standing in the bathroom. He doesn’t look different yet, his face perhaps slightly paler and more serpentine, the eyes slightly more haunted – but, well Death should know, that’s what killing people does to you._

_He raises his hand to her, and held between 2 fingers she sees a ring of bright gold and black stone. She steps over the dead father who now drips blood onto the expensive rug, and takes the ring from Tom Riddle. It sings to her in her hand, the stone she imbued with power glinting back at her, but not reflecting her face. On instinct she wants to rip it from the gold band holding it, drag it away from the mortals who abuse the power she has, but she doesn’t. She knows this stone is meant for something more._

_She looks back to Tom Riddle. His eyes are hungry, but shielding pain, and she reaches out a hand and pushes him down onto his knees. She will not do this with him standing next to her like an equal. She is in control here._

_She rips the soul from his chest again, holds it in her palm. It’s smaller than last time, and one side is black, and shrivelled, and ugly – like scar tissue trying to fix a wound. The soul shudders and breaks, again splitting into 2 halves. She gives one back to Tom Riddle, and puts one into the ring, throwing it back down onto his lap as the magic dissipates from the room._

_She turns on her heel, and in the next second she’s gone._

 

_***_

 

Harry sits in the corner of his and Ron’s room in Grimmauld Place and tries to remember how to breathe. Downstairs, he can hear the Weasley’s decorating the house for Christmas, but he wants no part of their joy. Not when he feels so dirty and contaminated, like there’s a snake waiting to burst out of him at any second. Hunger gnaws in his belly, and he closes his eyes and tilts his head back against the wall, trying desperately not to think about how he might have been possessed by Lord Voldemort himself. Trying not to let the panic clench around his heart.

‘ _You know, just from experience, I’ve noticed that starvation really isn’t a good way to go.’_

Harry jerks up and spins round onto his feet, drawing his wand. She’s standing there, bathed in shadows almost like she’s growing out of them, only her white face clearly visible in the gloom.

Harry’s heart pounds, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ He demands, ‘You’re not –‘, and he breaks off darting a terrified glance at the door, because if she’s here then that means someone is going to die, and how can that be possible?

‘ _Relax,’_ she murmurs, and the voice resonates around the room even though her lips don’t move, ‘ _I’m not here on business’_.

Harry takes a deep breath, and slowly lowers his wand. He can’t see her eyes properly, but she doesn’t move from where she stands. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘ _Let’s call it a personal matter,’_ she says, her voice light like she’s joking, although Harry doesn’t know what’s funny, ‘ _I’d like it if you could stop moping around and actually look after yourself’._ She slowly steps out of the shadows, although her cloak seems to spread back into them, as though she’s tethered to the darkness.

‘Why do you care?’ Harry asks, slightly disbelieving that he is actually standing here having a conversation with Death, but strangely, he isn’t scared of her, ‘If I died no one would care.’

She tilts her head to look at him, ‘ _Ah you see, that’s where you’re wrong. I think a great many people would care if you died._ ’

Harry looks away from her, unable to hold her gaze. Her eyes are now clearer, and they glitter like the night sky and see far too deep into him.

‘Thank you for saving Mr Weasley,’ he whispers quietly, like speaking it any louder will undo the spell that has fallen on the room. All the fight has left him, and he just feels hollow and hopeless.

‘ _I didn’t save him, he lived.’_ She answered casually, shrugging slightly like it was no big deal.

‘What do you mean ‘he lived’?’ Harry snaps, feeling sudden anger boil in his stomach, ‘You didn’t touch him so he’s alive. You touched Cedric and now he’s dead. That’s what you do! Why do you always go after good people? What have they ever done to you?!’ He’s shouting, and some distant part of his mind points out that if anyone can hear him now they’ll think he’s a complete nutter, but he doesn’t care. It’s just not fair.

The shadows flare up around her and suddenly she seems so much bigger than before. Her hair whips around her face as though caught in a hurricane, and her eyes have lit up like burning flames. Harry staggers backwards from the power suddenly emanating from her.

‘ _You think I have the power to choose who lives and who dies?’_ She snaps, angrily, ‘ _Only destiny decides that and then I come and collect those who need to be taken. I don’t get to choose!’_

Suddenly, she’s right up in his face, white nose inches from his own. She’s so cold, Harry’s breath puffs out as silvery mist. ‘ _You don’t think I would change things if I could?’_ she demands, and Harry has no answer.

She sighs quietly, forcibly calms herself, and turns away from him, speaking over her shoulder to him, ‘ _There are people I wish I could save. And there are people I want to die. I just don’t have the power to change it.’_

She sounds so sad, almost defeated, and Harry’s eyes are wide. He opens his mouth to respond, but then there’s a sharp knock at the door, and Hermione’s voice filters through the wood. Harry only glances at it for a heartbeat, but when he looks back, Death is gone.

 

***

 

_It happens again. And again. And again._

_Death watches this man – this Lord Voldemort – leave such destruction in his wake. She decides that she hates him, and somewhere deep in her heart, she fears him._

_He kills the fancily-dressed woman right there among her numerous collection boxes, and rips his soul apart again for Death to place a piece in a golden cup. Two days later, Death watches the woman’s house-elf be convicted for murder and led away – she will visit Hokey soon and take her away. Maybe she will be able to continue being loyal to her mistress in the place beyond mortality._

_A muggle tramp becomes his next victim. Muddy, dishevelled in tattered clothes, wandering along a lonely road. Completely innocent. Riddle lurks in the shadows and pounces like a predator into his path. There is green light and that is it. As he completes the horcrux ritual, Death looks into Riddle’s face. It’s pale, and the nose is flattening, nostrils becoming slits. His eyes burn with a red ring within the dark irises. She tosses the locket with the snake engraved on it into the dirt and leaves that place. How she wishes she could have stamped it – and him – into the mud. Sadly, some things are meant to be._

_She finds him next in a forest in Albania. He rips through a hollow tree to find his prize, as she watches from the dappled shadows. The diadem glitters in his hands as he holds it up to the light, his face awash with greed. He kills another innocent for this one. A peasant, heading home to his family after a long day of manual work. Death hopes he will find peace, wonders how it ever came to this. As she rips Riddle’s soul apart it shrieks and cracks from the new wound. It’s so small in her hand, pulsing faintly and shrivelled like scar tissue. It must hurt, she muses, as she returns the soul to its owner, and transfers a part to the diadem, and to be perfectly honest, she doesn’t mind that too much._

_Riddle looks up at her and then stands, ending up taller than her. She stares at him levelly – in many ways she is scared of his desperation and his greed and his cruelty, but then again, she is Death and she cannot be touched by the likes of him. He pushes his face almost up to her nose, and smiles with only coldness. ‘I’m beating you’, he hisses, ‘I will never go with you’. And he laughs, high and empty._

_Death raises her eyebrows at him. Doesn’t he realise no one can beat Death? Everything must die._

 

_***_

 

Luna gestures to a space behind him, and Harry whirls around. There, among the thick undergrowth, stand two skeletal black Thestrals with gleaming white eyes. He moves towards them, and rubs their soft necks, fingers running through their smooth manes. He thinks they are beautiful.

A rustle beside them makes him jump, and he sees another Thestral enter the clearing, but this one is accompanied by a figure that Harry knows instantly as a cold flash rushes down his spine. She is petting the Thestral - long, white fingers running along the beast’s neck.

‘I hope you being here isn’t a bad omen.’ Harry murmurs, too low for Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville, to hear. His heart jumps as he thinks of Sirius alone in the Department of Mysteries possibly dying. Does her presence here mean she’s not taking him, or is she going to accompany them to London and then snatch him away?

She turns to him, and here in the shadows of the forest she seems more solid. Her face is still pale, and her eyes shrouded in darkness, but her hair lies smoother and cascades around her face. Her robes look more real, like he could reach out and touch them and feel the same textures that he feels with his own.

‘ _What will be, will be.’_ She tells him. ‘ _I was just here to see my Thestrals, but you always seem to find me Harry Potter, and I sense they want to help you, so I suppose my visit will have to be cut short.’_

‘Wait, your Thestrals?’ Harry asks, perplexed, ‘They belong to Hagrid.’

Death laughs, a sound slightly like cracking ice, ‘ _The herd is Hagrid’s yes. But Thestrals in general are mine. The horses of death. You can only see them if you have been near me.’_

Harry nods. It makes sense he supposes, for if you’ve seen someone die then Death must have been there too. ‘Thank you for lending them to us then.’ He says, fidgeting a bit under her intense gaze.

She smiles. ‘ _You’re welcome. Good luck getting to London. I hope –_ ‘ she breaks off slightly, like she runs out of breath, ’ _I hope you get there in time.’_

It feels like Harry gets doused by a bucket of cold water as Death averts her gaze, and melts into the darkness. He turns back to his friends with a renewed sense of urgency, leading the Thestrals behind him.

 

***

 

_She stands in the corner of their merry meeting and feels only despair. They toast drinks to each other, talk loudly, and laugh heartily, and all Death can see is the clocks above each head slowly ticking down. Too many of them show far too few years for the ages of the people they belong to._

_The group is calling themselves the ‘Order of the Phoenix’, and Death thinks it is strangely poetic. Phoenixes are said to rise from the ashes after death – they live again and again – but this group only seems to contain people who will die far too young. They are brave, but bravery can too easily become stupidity. They are so full of hope, but don’t they realise that it is hopeless. Voldemort is strong. And he is coming._

_She stalks through their midst. Brushes past Benjy Fenwick who shivers at her passing, sees Fabian Prewett order another drink, watches Marlene McKinnon laugh so hard at a joke she clutches her stomach. So much life. So much light to be snuffed out by the dark._

_She is drawn to the five people who talk at the head of the table, their casual touches and closeness showing a familiarity with each other developed over many years. The man with shoulder-length black hair is gesticulating wildly, while a man with scars over his face shakes his head with fondness. A smaller man is hunched in his chair and hanging onto his every word. A man with jet back messy hair and glasses is laughing at his friend’s story, with a red-haired woman resting her head on his shoulder while smiling. Those last two will die first she can see, but there is something so important about them that she can’t place._

_She stays there for the rest of the night. She lets the life wash over her, and wishes that things could change._

 

_***_

 

Harry watches the jet of light hit Sirius squarely in the chest, and everything around him seems to stop. Before he even realises it, he’s running down the staircase towards the raised platform.

Sirius’ eyes widen in shock, and he stumbles backwards and begins to fall. Harry watches as white fingers slowly emerge from the folds in the vale and grasp his shoulders, supporting his arc down and backwards through the veil. Harry can’t breathe, and it feels like his heart might pound out of his chest. The veil flutters as though a breeze has merely disturbed it, and then falls back into place.

Strong arms wrap around Harry’s chest and prevent his movement forwards. Lupin grabs him and he’s speaking, but all Harry can think is that Sirius will emerge in a minute. He’ll reappear from the other side of the archway. Those hands mean nothing. Nothing. They certainly don’t mean that Death has in fact followed them to London.

Harry struggles and screams his Godfather’s name. That’s Sirius, that’s the only family he has left; he has to come out from behind the veil. He has to be here. He can’t be dead.

Lupin starts dragging him away, but Harry’s eyes remain fixed on the archway. And then there behind it, a figure shifts. Harry tries to lurch forwards again, but then everything inside him turns to ice as he sees who it is.

It isn’t the laughing, smiling face of Sirius, eagerly moving to re-enter the battle with Bellatrix. The figure is wrapped in black mist, and her hair obscures her face as she leans against the archway, surveying the battlefield. She seems to droop into herself, her head falling forwards, and then she looks up and meets his eyes.

Harry stares at her, and he wants to _hate_ her for killing Sirius, but everything in him is numb. She watches him, and her face looks so tired, and even from this distance he can see that her eyes are full of guilt.

As Lupin starts talking to Neville, and slowly releases Harry, Death steps back through the black cloth of the veil, and Harry’s left with a resounding voice in his head saying, _‘I’m sorry’_.

 

***

 

_She hates him more than anything else. She follows his footsteps and cleans up the destruction he leaves in his wake, bodies littered here and there as the rise of Lord Voldemort occurs._

_She loses count of the people she is forced to take too early, and the orphans she is made to create. She hovers near numerous hospital beds as people hover between the land of the living and dead. She touches too many muggles who don’t even know what is happening in the world. She hates him, and she hates his power, and she hates that he is undermining her. Forever, she has been Death, and she collects the people who die when she needs to. But now, this man wanders through the world and causes ceaseless death and it is_ not fair _that he can kill on such a scale and not bare any consequences, that he can choose all the people to kill while she just has to take what is given to her._

_The only thing that makes it better, is knowing that Destiny must be allowing this to happen for a reason. Something must be able to fight this evil, even if it isn’t her, and that maybe one day, she will be able to rip the remainder of Tom Riddle’s soul out of his chest and toss it into oblivion. She can’t wait._

_There are too many things she wishes she could change. When she watches Bellatrix torture Frank and Alice Longbottom she wishes she could let them come with her instead of surviving in a purgatory of emptiness. When she sees Lily and James choose Peter to be their Secret Keeper she wishes she could yell at them and tell them that Peter has been with Voldemort, that he will betray them and they will die. Every day brings new heartbreak, and Death just wants it to stop. But she has always been patient, and she will wait._

 

_***_

 

Harry fights with everything he has to move away from the wall he’s leaning on, but the non-verbal spell that Dumbledore immobilised him with is too strong. He watches as Snape forces his way through the crowd of Death Eaters, and pushes Draco out of the way.

Dumbledore looks up at him with such hopeless eyes, his face pale and his body shaking. His voice is so quiet as he pleads to this man that he trusts. Snape raises his wand, and yells ‘Avada Kedavra’. Harry screams internally, the sound never managing to escape his frozen lips.

The green light hits Dumbledore squarely in the chest, with such force that he’s thrown into the air, arching under the shape of the glowing green skull. Harry can only stare as he seems to hang suspended in mid-air, but then a figure moved behind him.

She looked like an avenging angel – wrapped in shadow, with large feathery black wings sprouting from her shoulder blades. The wind shifted by her movements seem to shake the Dark Mark, breaking it apart slightly as though her power could overcome the darkness that created the mark. She reaches out and touches her hand to Dumbledore’s head, pulling it back as moonlight peaks through the clouds and frames them both in silver.

Harry doesn’t want to believe she’s there, doesn’t want to think about what that means, and even as he watches a cloud blocks the moon and she seems to melt into the night sky. Dumbledore’s body stays still for another long, drawn-out second, and then it falls behind the battlements and disappears from view.

Time seems to fast forward as he chases the Death Eaters through the castle and out into the grounds, as he fights Snape and is helped by Hagrid. Time only seems to stop moving so quickly as he stumbles through the crowd of people gathered at the base of the tower. He crouches down next to Dumbledore’s body, adjusts his glasses and cleans his face. He only feels numb, even as he finds the locket and reads the note contained within.

He only looks up when he feels her presence, the strange chill that runs up his spine. He can barely see her through the gloom, but her white face peers out of the darkness from the base of the tower. Harry can’t make out her expression, but he gets a sense of sadness emanating from her in the still night, and the strangest thought that this is where the war begins.

 

***

 

_Death steps into the little cottage after the hooded figure and watches the man on the stairs be struck down with green light. James Potter wasn’t even holding a wand, and there he is falling in defence of his family against an evil that people are afraid to name._

_Lord Voldemort steps over his corpse like it’s nothing, merely an annoyance getting in the way of his journey upstairs. Death approaches the body behind him, carefully closes James’ eyes and takes away his soul. Something in her breaks at the fact that he’ll never be able to laugh with Sirius and Remus again._

_She ascends the stairs as she hears Lily barricading herself in the nursery, and the cruel high laugh of Voldemort as he blasts his way in. She hesitates in the doorway – she doesn’t want to watch this, doesn’t want to see this family ripped apart in such a way._

_Lily is begging for her son’s life, Death watches over Voldemort’s shoulder as she uses her own body to shield the crib from the murderer even as he orders her to stand aside. Death can’t watch as the green light flashes and Lily Potter falls to the floor. She moves to her body, strokes her face, and takes her soul and cradles it before sending it on its way. Then, she looks up at Voldemort who is stalking towards the crib._

_He holds his wand up and points it straight at the baby’s face, and the child stares at it with wide green eyes and barely a hint of fear. The wand is eye-level to Death crouching on the floor, and as hatred coils in her gut, she has the urge to just knock the wand away and turn it back against its owner. However, she can sense something will happen here – something so important – so she holds herself still and watches._

_The snake-like face below the hood smiles as the baby finally starts to realise that his mother isn’t going to get up of the floor, and starts to cry. He whispers the words, and green light erupts from the wand tip, hits the boy, but then amazingly – impossibly – rebounds into Voldemort. He staggers backwards as the room explodes around him, and his body seems to start dissolving into mist, a smoke that coalesces in mid-air._

_Death lurches to her feet, the sound of the boy screaming in her ears, as a white orb is ejected from the cloud of darkness. It writhes in the air as though in agony, and then splinters into two parts. One part is pulled back into the mist, which then escapes through the now broken roof into the night. The other half starts to float, almost lazily across the room. Death stares at it as it moves towards the one living thing left in the room, and all she can think is ‘No, no, no, not this.’_

_The boy in the cot gazes at the light, wet eyes glinting as his sadness is momentarily forgotten. He reaches up his little arms to try and bat at it, and Death dives forwards to try and catch it, but her hands just pass right through it, and it continues its journey towards the child._

_Her heart twists in despair as she watches it pass through the bars of the cot and hover in front of the boy’s face. It illuminates his innocent features in silver as he smiles at it, and then passes into his chest. Death slides to her knees in front of the boy, hopelessness suddenly filling her. The boy looks as her in confusion, and for the first time ever Death meets the eyes of a living, breathing being that isn’t imminently going to die. Shock ricochets through her as green eyes meet black, and she slowly smiles at the boy who is beginning to cry again. The door on the ground floor slams, and she knows the boy won’t be alone for long._

_She pushes a hand through the bars of the crib and holds it near the boy’s face, and watches him shiver slightly. She grins wider, and says ‘Hello Harry Potter. You’re rather special, aren’t you?’, and then she has to go._

 

_***_

 

Harry’s knees hit sand and he feels a rush of salty air blow in his face. He lowers Griphook down and looks around, noting the cottage barely visible through the descending night. Then his eyes fall on the house-elf.

Dobby is swaying slightly, and his eyes reflect the clear night sky high above them. The hilt of a silver knife glints in the moonlight, protruding from the elf’s shaking chest. Harry screams for help, and catches Dobby as he stumbles towards him with open eyes.

‘Dobby, no, don’t die, don’t die-‘ Harry begs, quiet in the dark with waves crashing onto the shore behind him. Dobby meets his eyes and his lips trembles as he says ‘Harry… Potter.’ And then he falls still.

Harry simply stares, and then realises he isn’t alone kneeling there on the beach. She kneels opposite him, her body not making a dent in the soft sand, the folds of her robes stretching away from her like black liquid. She’s looking down at the elf, but as Harry notices her she glances up and meets his gaze. Her arms extend towards him – a simple request, and one he knows he must obey. He doesn’t realise he’s slowly rocking Dobby’s body until he looks down and sees the movement for himself. Slowly, he lifts the small curled form from the ground, and passes it to the figure waiting for it. His heart feels like it’s breaking and his hands are shaking.

Death takes the body and cradles it in her arms. Harry is surprised by her gentleness as she carefully closes Dobby’s eyes. Her gaze shifts to the knife in his chest, and Harry thinks he sees a flash of anger or disgust morph her features. She pulls it out tosses it away into the shadows. Her hair falls in front of the elf’s face for a fraction of a second, and Harry instinctively knows that whatever it is she does to souls has been done. He hopes against hope that Dobby is going somewhere better, where he can be free forever.

She lowers the elf to the ground between them, and Harry silently removes his jacket and lays it over Dobby like a blanket. There are figures coming closer from the direction of the cottage, and he knows she won’t stay for long now. He looks up at her again, and she’s watching him with a look of sadness that takes his breath away.

 _‘He was very brave_.’ Her voice echoes and mixes with the wind and the sea, and then a beam of light flashes over them, and she seems to dissolve in its brightness.

 

***

 

_She enters the dusty room calmly, while anger slowly rolls in her gut. In front of the empty fireplace lays the body of Bertha Jorkins, partially blocked from her view by the high backed armchair._

_She rounds the chair and looks at its occupant with thinly disguised disgust. Look what the mighty Lord Voldemort has become. Her eyes track over the being that looks like a baby, although the skin is dry and wrinkled, and the eyes gleam scarlet. He’s swaddled in black cloth, and he looks up at her with so much hatred that she thinks that if looks could kill (and if she could actually die) she would drop dead right there._

_A large snake slithers over the back of the armchair, and coils around the infant, as he raises a far too long wand for his skeletal hand and begins to chant. She raises her eyebrows at him, her gaze shifting from him, to the body on the floor, then back again._

_‘Really?’ she asks, incredulously, and then she laughs – high and cold and cutting. ‘Do you really fear death so much?’ She throws herself into his face and grins manically, ‘Do you really fear_ me _so much?’_

_He remains focussed on his task, but Death sees the flash in his eyes. The dread of oblivion. The desperation to avoid it no matter what the cost. She has never met anyone like him, and she highly doubts she ever will again. The one true fact of life is that everything that lives must die, but he fights against it with every fibre of his being and has done so since he was a handsome teenager all those years ago. It won’t work. She knows this. Death will be the end of everything, even Tom Marvolo Riddle, and she senses that it might not be too long before she will be holding his soul for the final time._

_She lets him complete his ritual, tugs out his soul that is deformed beyond repair. The tears now barely heal, they act like scabs that break open again with any hint of pressure, oozing dark liquid like the wounds are infected. She snaps it in half again, and returns one to the mere shadow of Voldemort, and presses the other in the head of the snake, which rears back and hisses its displeasure._

_She looks down at Voldemort for a few moments longer, as he stares back up at her with defiance glittering in his gaze._

 

_***_

 

He runs through the Hogwarts corridors, trying desperately to ignore the bodies he’s stepping over and the sounds of fighting inside and outside the castle. Everything in him is screaming to turn back and fight alongside his fellow Hogwarts students, but deep down he knows that this mission will create a far larger impact than fighting individual Death Eaters. He needs to find that diadem, and destroy it. Then Voldemort will be one step closer to death.

Harry bumps into Hermione and Ron coming up from the Chamber of Secrets, and drags them along with him. He sees the people he cares about run past him, fighting hard as the castle ceilings shake and drop dust on their heads. He races into the seventh floor corridor, and paces in front of the Room of Requirement, entering it when the door appears.

They split up, and Harry moves through the many alleys between all the forgotten and leftover junk from so many generations of students. He can feel it, it’s close, and – there! On top of the stone warlock with a dirty wig.

That’s the point where Crabbe, Goyle, and Malfoy interrupt him. They taunt him and tell him they’re going to take him to Voldemort, and when Crabbe shoots a killing curse at Hermione he sees red, and they start duelling. Within minutes they are running, and then the room starts to get hot. The three Slytherin’s sprint past them, and fire follows in their wake.

It’s unlike any fire Harry’s ever seen, as he staggers backwards and breaks into a run. It spits and hisses and sparks and consumes. It chases them as it devours the debris of years. Harry grabs brooms, and soon they’re flying through the choking smoke and suffocating heat. Harry’s eyes fall on the figures of Malfoy and Goyle clinging onto a tower of charring wood, and races towards them, grabbing Malfoy’s hand and hauling him onto the broom. He looks down, and there too far below is Crabbe, trying to climb as the wood splinters under him.

Harry knows what’s going to happen before it does. Crabbe loses his grip, and falls backwards, face coated in sweat and mouth agape in fear. A jet of fire rushes up to meet him, shaped like a serpent’s head, reaching, stretching. But then the fire transforms, and instead it is a winged figure framed in flames. Her robes have become licking tongues of fire, and her face is wrapped in smoke and her eyes blaze with the inferno. She catches Crabbe as the fire consumes him, and is instantly gone in the rolling blaze. Malfoy screams in his ear and he doesn’t hesitate for a second more, racing towards the room’s exit. He has a strong suspicion that this will not be the first time he sees Death today.

 

***

 

_It’s a busy day to be Death. She stalks the corridors that are crumbling around her, passes and touches bodies littered over broken stone and lying in dust. Many of them are too young or too good. She wants this to stop._

_She has to take the red-headed boy while a smile still graces his face. His eyes widen and the smile falters when he sees her, but she hopes he will forgive her and possibly give her domain some humour._

_She takes the pink-haired woman and the scarred man together. They are holding hands, and she touches them simultaneously as the curses hit them and the corridor explodes around them. They were united in life, why not let them be united in death too._

_She snatches away the boy with the camera who seems far too young to be fighting. He tries to take a picture of her in the split-second before she reaches him, and it makes her smile slightly. She isn’t sure if cameras work in the place he is going, but perhaps she will find out now._

_She pulls the man away who is ripped into by Voldemort’s snake once he’s done his duty to Harry Potter. She watches the boy race away to the castle as she holds the soul of Severus Snape and then sends it on its way. She isn’t happy with what he has done with his life, but then again, what would she know about love?_

_And there are so many more. Lights snuffed out in her vision everywhere she looks, flickering in her periphery. So much potential taken away – all those choices, all those memories, all those opportunities, all those emotions. They will never be made, given, felt anymore. These people could have done anything. And now they never will. Now they will do nothing. She hates it._

_There are Death Eaters too of course. Never let it be said that the side of the good can’t put up a great fight. She wishes she could say she treated them with respect, but she’s angry and bitter, so she doesn’t. She kicks their souls away into darkness, rips them from bodies and throws them into oblivion. They had no honour in life, why should they have some in death. She is meant to be objective, impartial, detached, but she is not. She cannot abide this kind of massacre. It has happened before, and it will likely happen again due to the violence of humans, but she will not sit and watch it blindly. She will do the little she can to make her feel better, and if that involves being cruel to the murderers of children then so be it._

_The night draws on, and the stars come out. There will be far more in the sky tonight._

 

_***_

 

He did not want to die. As he approached the Forbidden Forest, his heart beat a drum of defiance in his chest. Seemingly rebelling against the fact that he _had_ to die. He couldn’t survive this if he wanted to win. If he wanted everyone remaining in the castle to live.

He figures out the Snitch’s message, whispers to it in the darkness, and holds the black stone tightly in his fist. He summons the people who he wishes could have been here in reality, and they appear shifting and ghostly among the trees – Remus, Sirius, his parents. They were all gone too young, and Harry is so so sorry. He slowly realises that the same is going to happen to him. People left alive will say he died _too young_ , will say it is _unfair_. And yet is has always meant to be this way.

As he walks he thinks back to a dark, slimy chamber that he had been in what feels like a lifetime ago. The voice then had said ‘Another time perhaps’, and this was it. He knows he will see Death soon, will finally actually feel her touch, and he realises he isn’t scared. He has seen enough death, why should he be fearful of his own?

He approaches Voldemort in the clearing, speaking boldly into the sudden silence, meeting the gaze of his death directly. As Voldemort raises his wand, he shifts his gaze, and there she is. Pushing herself away from the trees and getting into position.

She approaches him, stands in front of him and blocks his view of his imminent demise. He’s never realised how cold she is before. She looks so solid standing a foot away from him, and Harry wants to reach out and touch her. Her eyes are bright like a clear night sky but filled with an emotion he can’t place. Pride, perhaps? Or pity? As Harry stares at her, her mouth quirks up in a smile.

A jet of green light shoots right through her and hits him directly on the chest. His legs buckle and he begins to fall, but then freezing hands catch him under his arms as he slumps to the forest floor. Cold arms wrap around him like they’re hugging him, and where they touch him, warmth flows out into him. A rushing sensation sparks through him, like the feeling of freedom he feels when he’s flying. He realises belatedly, that everything has gone dark around him, and the last thing he sees is Death’s grinning face as the blackness consumes him.

He wakes to a world of white, objects forming themselves from dense mist and things coming into being only as he thinks of them. Death is standing near him, almost surveying the area in curiosity. For the first time ever she isn’t draped in shadows, she looks like flesh and blood just like anyone else. Harry moves over to her, she doesn’t feel cold anymore, and her face isn’t quite so skull-like, her skin less like porcelain. She looks at him, and her eyes are the same. Harry feels like he could fall into them, but they also give him comfort – they are something familiar in a world that isn’t making sense. He should be dead, and yet here he stands.

‘Where are we?’ he asks, voice sounding loud in the emptiness.

‘Hmmm,’ she murmurs, ‘A place just for you, I think. There’s someone here who wanted to see you. He was quite insistent when I tried to take him away.’ She’s smiling again, and her eyes are focussed on someone over his shoulder. When he turns around, there stands Albus Dumbledore.

‘I’ll give you some time.’ Death tells him, and then the mist swallows her.

Dumbledore explains everything – about Voldemort, about the Hallows, about the reason that this place looks an awful lot like Kings Cross Station (honestly, couldn’t his brain have done something a bit more imaginative?). And then he tells him he has a choice. He can go back or go on – he could get a train in either direction. It would be easy, wouldn’t it? Getting a train to a place where there was no pain, no loss, no suffering. He’s had more than enough of them for a lifetime. And yet, he has a job to finish. Voldemort must die. And more than that, he has friends back at Hogwarts – people he loves and who love him. Is it really fair to abandon them?

Death steps out of the mist again, and approaches them. He looks at her, thinks of what Dumbledore had just told him about being the Master of Death – is that why he has seen her for all of these years? Has fate really been pulling their strings together for all this time? He doesn’t fear death, in fact maybe at this point he would welcome it, but he also doesn’t fear life. And he knows what he has to do.

‘I have to go back.’ He tells her. His voice is almost desperate, and he hopes she can understand his reasons without him having to explain them.

She nods to him, grinning. ‘Fair enough.’ She says, ‘I can do that. But you better make sure you succeed in your task. I don’t want to have to collect you again tonight.’ Her eyes shine with warmth and mirth, and Harry loves her so much in this moment. She will take him back, possibly disobeying some ancient rule in the process. She has always been there with him, and Harry is grateful. Trelawney had seen the Grim following him in the crystal ball, but really it had been Death that stalked him all along. Death who now looks at him like a friend. She reaches out, lays her hand over his heart, and says ‘Come on, we have a job to do.’

Then, he’s soaring.

 

***

 

_They circle each other like rival wolves, tracing a circle into the ancient flagstones. She stands in the centre, still, waiting. Shadows pool around her feet as she listens to their conversation. The moment is coming, and she can reach either of them, no matter which spell manages to hit its mark._

_She tore Bellatrix Lestrange from the world mere minutes ago, and her fingers twitch slightly in need to rip the darkest soul she has ever known from this place._

_She looks at the man she despises – his snake-like face, glaring red eyes, high cold laugh. He clutches the wand she herself created in his hand, and she can feel it thrumming with energy, although maybe it’s not quite right in his grip. She looks to the boy she has seen grow up – his round glasses, piercing green eyes, messy black hair. His face is grim-streaked, but set in a look of defiance that no one could rival. The room is so still except for the pair of them – dark and light, evil and good, fear and bravery._

_The spells bang like cannon blasts and they collide in the centre of the circle, right in front of her. She feels the shift in the air and instantly turns towards Voldemort. Her wand shakes in his grasp, and then flies upwards to return to its True Master, and she rushes in underneath it as a green, rebounding curse slams into Voldemort’s chest._

_She reaches him as she falls, and her fingers curl into claws as they rip into his chest and find the shredded remains of his soul and hold it in front of him - a parody of the first time he made a horcrux. His eyes widen in shock, and he meets her gaze in terror before they roll backwards and his body crashes to the floor. She drops the soul to the floor, smashes it under the heel of her foot as she sends it on its way – her anger almost causing the stone to crack beneath her._

_She stares down as the shell of Tom Riddle. In death he is pitiful, small, broken. The power he held was gone in the second that spell hit him, and now he is no more. It almost seems too easy._

_She looks over her shoulder as the audience surges into the centre of the room, leaving an empty ring around Voldemort’s body. She automatically finds the piercing green gaze that is watching her. Harry is being engulfed by his friends, but as their eyes meets he nods slightly at her. She grins back, and then her view of him is obscured by the rush of people._

_She turns away from their celebration. Life and happiness is not her domain, and she suddenly feels out of place amongst the survivors of such a gruesome battle. She will leave them to their grief and their joy, and she will see Harry Potter again very soon._

 

_***_

 

He manages to escape the crowd and the noise of the castle after having a sleep, eating some food, and starting to get to work on the cleaning up after the battle. He’s already tired of the many ‘congratulations’ everybody he sees keep throwing at him, so he leaves to get some space. He stares out over the lake and fiddles with the wand in his hand.

He senses her without even having to turn around. Her chill permeates the air, and he waits until she walks up next to him, stands alongside him.

‘ _This belongs to you.’_ She says with no fanfare – she knows what this war has cost him and she knows the pain of loss that tempers the joy of winning. She holds out her skeletal hand, and places a small, black pebble into his hand. The Resurrection Stone.

‘ _There now,´_ she states briskly, like she’s just finished an annoying chore, ‘ _You’re now Master of Death.’_

Harry finally looks at her, taking in her porcelain face, her starlit eyes, her shadowed hair. She’s looking at him almost fondly, and Harry has to look away, glancing down at the stone as he turns it over in his fingers.

‘What does that mean exactly?’ He asks her, curious despite himself.

She hums quietly in thought, ‘ _It means you have beaten Death – you do not fear me as most mortals do. You are in possession of all the gifts I gave to those three brothers all those years ago and so you can disobey my wishes – you can kill whoever you want, you can bring back those you choose to, and if you wish to, you can hide from me for as long as your life lasts. Although, I think we both know that those gifts are also curses.’_

She muses for a few minutes, head tilting slightly to the side as she gazes out over the grey water, ‘ _And I suppose there are some quirks. Possible immortality for one…’_ Harry’s eyebrows rise, ‘ _And of course you have my greatest respect, and quite possibly the authority to, shall we say, boss me around? But who knows the extent of it, really, after all, no one has ever been the Master of Death before.’_

Harry nods slowly, and then asks, ‘Why me?’

She looks at him again, and her eyes aren’t full of the pity that he sees in so many people’s gazes when they look at him, they’re calculating and calm.

‘ _I don’t know,’_ she answers, honestly, _‘But I think it was always meant to be this way. After all, you are the only mortal who has ever been able to see me when you aren’t dying. Fate likes to play games like that.’_

Harry blinks at her confession – if he’s the only mortal she regularly sees, she must be so lonely. He never thought of her as someone who could feel such things, but after all these years – seeing her angry, and sad, and happy – maybe it is possible that even the powerful being that is Death can also be almost human.

His eyes fall back to the objects he’s holding. He has a decision to make, and in his heart he knows there could only ever be one option. ‘These are yours, not mine.’ He says, holding out the wand and the stone, ‘I don’t want them.’

She glances down at them, then back up at him, ‘ _Are you sure? If you give them up you give up being Master of Death.’_

‘I know’, he answers calmly, ‘I don’t want to be Master of Death – I’ve seen enough death for a lifetime.’ He feels almost bad saying this to the very person who causes death, who snatches people away, but it is true, and he stoically ignores the brief flash of pain that he sees in her eyes. ‘You must take these back. They are too powerful to be left among mortals.’ He has used them for everything he needs them for – the stone let him see his parents again, the wand fixed his own Holly and Phoenix feather wand – now they are useless to him.

She nods, ‘ _Very well.’_ She takes them from him, and Harry shivers at the stroke of her freezing hands. She tucks the wand into her robes, and drops the stone into her pocket. ‘ _And the cloak?’_ she asks.

‘Ah,’ he grins sheepishly, ‘I’d like to keep that if you don’t mind.’

She smiles and chuckles, ‘ _Alright, I suppose I can make an exception this time, although please remember that is does belong to me.’_

‘Of course,’ Harry sniggers, ’I wouldn’t dream of ever forgetting the fact that my invisibility cloak was given to my family by Death herself.’

Her smile fades as she surveys his face, and Harry knows what’s coming. Knows that this might be the last time he sees her other than when he dies. Declining the offer of Master of Death likely means he will become like any other mortal – blissfully going through their everyday lives without the image of Death stalking their footsteps.

‘ _I have to go.’_ She murmurs, feet shuffling in the gravel as her eyes flick down and then back up to his. She straightens up, ‘ _It was an honour knowing you, Harry Potter.’_

Harry stares into her eyes, and replies, ‘You too.’ Then he blinks, and Death is gone.

 

***

 

_She leans against the wall next to the door to the morgue, because she can feel him searching for her, and where else do you look for Death?’_

_He steps quietly into the empty corridor, robes looking a bit ruffled – it’s been an important night for him after all. His face is older, more chiselled and yet Death can easily see the shadow of the 12-year old boy she saw in the Chamber of Secrets in his unruly black hair, and even see the ghost of the baby she met all those years ago in his bright green eyes. It has been a few years since she has last seen him, and he has changed while she has stayed the same. Peacetime seems to have agreed with him._

_‘You won’t always be able to find me, you know.’ She calls out into the silence instead of a greeting. His eyes narrow as he squints into the shadows concealing her, ‘You’re not the Master of me anymore, you gave that up.’ Gave that up and left her utterly, and completely alone. How she envies him._

_‘_ I just wanted to speak to you for a moment,’ _he replies, holding up his hands in a placating gesture,_ ‘And you obviously waited for me as you knew I was coming.’

_She laughs slightly, high and cold. ‘I wait for no one, I am Death.’_

_He nods, mouth quirking slightly like he’s amused by her defiance. ‘I know. I just wanted to ask you something.’_

_She sighs, ‘Shouldn’t you be upstairs? With you wife and new-born son? You should get your priorities sorted out if you’re here talking to Death instead of being there with the living.’_

_He properly smiles then, and joy radiates from him despite the shadows under his eyes and the scars of his past. She almost shies away from such radiance – the happiness that comes from witnessing the continuation of a family and the beginning of a life. It is something Death will never feel, and in that second she yearns to experience it just once. Just for a moment so it may chase her loneliness away and give her something to smile about. But that isn’t possible – the ecstasy of life only belongs to the mortals. She hates them._

_‘They’re sleeping,’ he tells her, ‘so I thought I should give them some peace. And then I decided to find you.’_

_She steps off from the wall and approaches him, ‘Fine,’ she snaps, ‘What was your question?’_

_He looks at her, and suddenly his eyes look so old. They are filled with sorrow and pain, and Death would look away if she didn’t think he could probably see the exact same feelings reflected in hers._

_‘Are they –‘ he breaks off, glances down, shuffles his feet, looks up again. Inhale, ‘Are they okay?’ Exhale._

_Death doesn’t need to ask who ‘they’ are. The word contains so many different people  - old, young, rich, poor. War does not discriminate between who it takes, and he speaks of the casualties from the Battle of Hogwarts._

_She watches him as he looks at her almost pleadingly, and as soon as it appeared, her envy and anger is replaced with pity and love. She should not tell him anything – mortals should not know so much – but he is Harry Potter and she cannot lie to him or refuse this request, not after everything he did. Everything he experienced, even death itself._

_She nods, ‘Yes,’ she says, quietly like saying it too loudly will break a spell, ‘They are all okay.’_

_Harry closes his eyes and lets out a breath, and tension seems to leach from him as relief washes over him. He looks at her again, ‘Thank you,’ he breathes._

_She nods again, and then they stand just looking at each other – two survivors who are so different and yet so similar. Life and Death, standing there opposite each other._

_She finally breaks the silence, ‘You should go back to the Land of the Living.’ She murmurs it, her heart breaking at having to say goodbye to this astonishing man. But it is the right thing to do. He does not belong here with her, he made that decision after the War, and she agrees with it even though it hurts. He has always been too full of life to ever be able to stand with Death._

_He nods in agreement, and exhaustion seems to sink into his bones from the last, no doubt stressful, few hours. He turns to leave, and then looks back over his shoulder. ‘Will I see you again?’ He asks._

_‘Oh yes.’ She answers, ‘Just one last time.’ And she melts into the shadows, leaving Harry Potter to live the life he deserves._

 

**The End**


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